Joseph Butler's Moral Philosophy

First published Wed Oct 17, 2012

Joseph Butler is best known for his criticisms of the hedonic and
egoistic “selfish” theories associated with Hobbes and
Bernard Mandeville and for his positive arguments that self-love and
conscience are not at odds if properly understood (and indeed promote
and sanction the same actions). In addition to his importance as a
moral philosopher Butler was also an influential Anglican theologian.
Unsurprisingly his theology and philosophy were connected — his
main writings in moral philosophy were published sermons, a work of
natural theology, and a brief dissertation attached to that work.
Although most of Butler's moral arguments make rich use of passages
from scripture and familiar Christian stories and concepts, they make
little reference to — and depend little on the reader having
— any particular religious commitments. Indeed many of his
arguments do not rest on the reader having any religious commitments
at all. His Analogy of Religion was aimed to convince deists
of the truth of core doctrines of natural and revealed theology but
the argument only assumes the premises Butler shared with them. This
has led to his philosophy being of interest to both secular and
Christian moralists, and to debate as to how much and what of his
ethics rests on his Christian commitments.

Butler was born in 1692 and attended a dissenting academy where he
read current philosophy — including up to date logic, and works
of John Locke and Samuel Clarke. While a student there Butler wrote a
letter to Clarke pointing out two problems in Clarke's arguments for
God's unicity and God's omnipresence in Demonstration of the Being and
Attributes of God. Butler's criticisms led to a mutually admiring
correspondence. Clarke arranged to have the correspondence published
in 1716, although Butler's letters appeared anonymously. Shortly
thereafter Butler joined the Church of England, attended Oxford, and
was ordained. This led to his appointment as preacher at Rolls Chapel,
the chapel associated with the London equity courts, where he served
until 1726. During this period he also earned a law degree. In 1726 he
published a selection of his sermons as Fifteen Sermons Preached at
the Rolls Chapel. It appeared in a second edition in 1729 with
corrections and with the addition of an important synoptic
“Preface”. In 1736 Butler published his major work of
natural theology, the Analogy of Religion, the work for which
he was best known in his lifetime, with two brief but important
dissertations: “Of Personal Identity” and “On
Virtue”. In the same year he was appointed Queen Caroline's
cleric, and after her death the following year he rose to become
Bishop of Bristol (1738) and eventually Bishop of Durham (1750). A
number of his sermons from the latter part of his career were
published individually. Some of them were collected as Six Sermons on
Public Occasions and published in 1749. This was followed by the
“Durham Charge” (a work exhorting the clergy of his
diocese) published a year before Butler's death in 1752 (For more on
Butler's life see Cunliffe 2008, from which most of the above
information is derived; see also Cunliffe 1992 and Tennant 2011).

Butler's moral philosophy is characterized by a very high degree of
analytic rigor and argumentative care. This is all the more surprising
for the fact that many of these rigorous arguments are presented in
sermons (and particularly in footnotes to sermons). The manner in
which Butler argues, and the details of the particular arguments, are
indeed what many philosophers who have engaged with him have found
most inspiring, even when they have rejected his conclusions
whole-heartedly. Butler's first three sermons provide a general
framework for his moral philosophy via a teleological account of human
nature. On the basis of this account of human nature Butler argues
that self-love and benevolence or virtue -- principles that other
moral philosophers have seen as in tension — are not only not in
tension but mutually supporting when properly understood. The
remaining sermons consider a number of key features of moral
psychology — self-deception, benevolence, forgiveness,
compassion — and further develop the discussions of self-love
and virtue initiated in the first three sermons. They make manifest
that Butler thought that the details of moral psychology when
carefully presented and rigorously sorted ruled out many questionable
commitments that looser philosophers took them to warrant. These
particular moral psychological inquiries are followed by a discussion
of love of God. For Butler this was a central and unifying sentiment
that showed the continuity between morals and natural religion. Butler
concluded the Sermons with a discussion of human ignorance, which in
conjunction with his discussions of self-deceit underscored one of his
central themes: the limits of human self-knowledge and knowledge of
divine design, limits that had to be continuously in mind when making
moral arguments. Butler's later sermons, the “Dissertation on
Virtue”, and the sections of the Analogy of Religion
that concern moral philosophy, also continue to develop many of these
themes.

In his “Preface” to the 2nd edition of his Sermons Butler
sketched his vision of “Morals, considered as a Science”,
(“Preface”, §6) — i.e. speculative moral
philosophy in need of defense from speculative objections as opposed to
practical moral counsel or revealed religion. Morals considered
as a science proceeds either from abstract relations of things or from
matters of fact (“Preface”, §12). Clarke and William
Wollaston were influential philosophers who argued primarily from
abstract relations to moral obligations, duties, virtues, etc. in their
moral systems. Clarke in particular had argued that we have a priori
access to the eternal “fitnesses” of things through certain, abstract,
and necessary quasi-mathematical arguments (Clarke 1706) that entail
necessary moral obligations and duties insofar as actions accord with
or fail to accord with eternal and immutable realities. In his
correspondence with Clarke, the young Butler noted his discovery of a
new method for establishing truths in morals (Butler/Clarke 1716,
§1). Although the correspondence took place a few years before
Butler delivered the Sermons, it seems likely that the method he
alluded to in the correspondence was the nascent method that he would
deploy in the first three sermons (which Butler stressed were argued
strictly from matters of fact (“Preface” §13).

Butler had little doubt that arguments from abstract relations and
arguments from matters of fact were complementary, but he held that the
latter had major advantages over the former as a method in ethics.
First it was in “a peculiar Manner adapted to satisfie a fair Mind; and
is more easily applicable to the several particular Relations and
Circumstances in Life” (“Preface”, §12). In
other words, arguments from matters of fact allowed us to discern moral
standards in human actions and for the standards to be accessible to
and motivating for ordinary reflecting agents (to be discussed in 3.).
Whereas the abstract relations of things might establish for Clarke or
Wollaston that “Vice is contrary to the Nature and Reasons of Things”
(“Preface”, §12), arguments of matter of fact
established that vice is “a violation or breaking in upon our own
Nature,” (“Preface”, §12). These fitnesses or
proportions were to be discovered in our nature and although they might
be consistent with a priori metaphysical relations, the norms and
values that they determined were obliging and motivating in absence of
access to said relations. As such they were relativized to human
nature, authoritative for it, and accessible via reflection on our
actions and observation of our actions and those of others

But one might still worry that moral judgments that rested on probable
matters of fact were less secure than those found to be in accordance
with eternal fitnesses, even with the aforementioned advantages. Seven
years later, Butler offered a methodological argument in the
“Introduction” to the Analogy that might respond
to this objection if applied to morals (although Butler framed the
point more generally). Although deductive arguments like those
championed by Clarke were secure when considered abstractly, they were
open to doubt when applied to matters of fact about actions or
characters. This was because one needed a hypothesis of how to apply
the abstract demonstrative truths to observed facts
(“Introduction” §7) — how to fit the fitnesses
to actions so to speak — and this hypothesis itself was not
deductively secure. Butler offered the analogy of Cartesian
physiology. Cartesian physiology applies Cartesian geometry to living
bodies. But one needs a probable hypothesis to move from the abstract
truths of Cartesian geometry to actual bodies and diseases. For
example, “this spleen is roughly an oval and the way it
interacts with the liver roughly results in this sort of
mechanism”. The mechanism itself as represented abstractly is a
certain geometrical relationship. But in order to apply the mechanism
to blood and guts, one needs to have a probable, i.e. not certain,
hypothesis about how the ideal mechanism fits with the facts on the
ground — that this arrangement of blood and guts is best
captured by this mechanism not that one. A similar problem arises when
applying eternal and abstract relations to particular moral
circumstances and actions. The need for a hypothesis as to how the
relations might fit actual actions rendered the evaluation of the
action merely probable even though the rightness and wrongness to
which the action was to conform — the eternal fitness —
was known certainly.

Since both Clarke's method and Butler's method were probable, Clarke's
probable in application to actions and Butler's in relying on matters
of fact about human nature in establishing facts about vice and
virtue, one might conclude skeptically that both failed. But Butler
argued that a probable course of action could still be morally
obligatory. He claimed that probable reasoning could result in
sufficient certainty for moral action when an action could be shown to
be more probably good than either inaction or an opposed
action. Lacking further evidence the more probably good action is
morally obligatory. This suggested a way in which probable evidence,
for example probable evidence for the existence of an afterlife, could
be obliging on us and was crucial to his arguments for the
reasonableness of basic Christian teachings in
the Analogy.

Because of the absence of a priori demonstrative premises, a moral
philosopher arguing from matters of fact had to have detailed knowledge
of the principles of action in human nature and of moral psychology as
well as arguments to show how these principles had bearing on virtue
and vice. Human beings, according to Butler, had within their nature
various instincts and principles of action: desires for particular
pleasures, benevolence, self-love, and conscience. The practitioner of
moral science aimed to discover what these principles are and the ways
in which these desires, reasons, and motivations fit together. This is
difficult in practice since the actions that we observe in ourselves
and in others almost always draw on more than one principle. For
example both self-love and the particular passions often go into the
motivation or justification for particular actions. Consequently the
moral scientist could be said to bring a version of Locke's negative
program of underbrush clearing in the theory of knowledge to moral
philosophy, by analyzing and disambiguating principles, motivations,
and passions which give rise to actions which we judge to be virtuous
and vicious. At the same time Butler's way of thinking about
morality as dictated by nature had strong resonances with the Stoics
and other ancient moralists.

In order to show how these principles, motivations, and passions
bear on virtue and vice Butler distinguished between three senses of
“nature” (Sermon 2). Nature (N1) can refer to any principle or element
that belongs to or motivates human beings. It can also refer (N2) to
the strongest among a group of principles, i.e., it is in our nature to
get angry, not to giggle, when unjustly accused. Finally it can refer
(N3) to natural supremacy, i.e., that a principle acts as a law, guide,
or authority to other principles or passions. Butler suggests that
whatever is naturally supreme unites various principles in a
teleological system. Consequently Butler can be seen to be arguing that
when we take a survey of all that belongs to human nature (N1) we
discover that conscience has natural supremacy (N3) in a united
hierarchy (although see Section Five for Butler's claim that
self-love is also a supreme principle). N1 principles can be identified
piecemeal, particular passions that belong to the human frame. N2
principles are relational, i.e. the strongest of a group of principles.
N3 principles are relational as well but they are also rational and
they unify other sorts of principles. By educing a hierarchy in the
principles of human nature, and by showing that the hierarchy is
independent of the strength (N2) of the principles as motivations for
action, we can demonstrate that what we ought to do morally (N3) may
differ from what we are most strongly motivated to do (N2) without
reflection.

Butler's best-known arguments for the natural hierarchy of
principles draw on a number of analogies: to a watch
(“Preface”), to a civil constitution (Sermon III), to a
tree, and to a machine (Sermon 3 Note 1). Just as a clock is not an
individual gear, or a pile of gears, but is what it is due to the ways
in which the gears move together towards an end, so too human nature is
not a particular principle of action, or a bundle of principles, but
the interaction of principles, desires, and reasons, as a system
towards ends. That our nature is structured towards ends, which Butler
takes to be empirically evident, gives evidence of a hierarchy of
principles to attain the ends, a hierarchy where some principles must
be naturally subordinate to others (N3). This shows that there is
something natural to us in the sense of N3, in addition to N1 and N2
(both of which are a matter of observed fact). “A civil
constitution implies in it united strength, various subordinates under
one direction … a superior faculty whose office it is to adjust,
manage, and preside over them,” (Sermon III §2). The governing
faculty has authority. When a civil constitution is violated or
overthrown by “meer power” this goes against the nature of the
constitution. When a machine's or a tree's parts no longer
bear proportionate relations among themselves and are no longer guided
by superior principles, it is broken or sick. By analogy, when forceful
principles and passions (N2) go against authoritative principles (N3),
or when the principles and passions no longer bear the same relations
or are in conflict this goes against our nature and is unnatural. The
analogy suggests that it is unnatural when a N2 principle overpowers a
N3 principle. The subordination of N2 principles to N3 principles is
natural and preserves and guides our natures. N3 principles are what we
ought to act on or act in accordance with. Deciding whether Butler
holds that we ought to act on them just because they are in accordance
with our nature or we ought to act on them because they are morally
right and in accordance with our nature has led to some of the most
salient objections to Butler's moral philosophy (see Section
4).

The supremacy of conscience in human nature can also be shown by a
comparison of the constitutions and natures of animals with human
nature. Animals are driven by principles similar to (or identical to)
those that give rise to human actions: they share many of our
passions and they too are driven by self-interest. When animals act
according to these principles they act appropriately to their natures
(in senses N1 and N2). But humans have a principle, conscience, which
animals lack. This suggests that humans do not act suitably to
what is distinctive to their whole nature, and in particular suitable
to that end which draws on many of the principles of human nature when
they act only from those principles that they share with animals and
not according to conscience.

Interpreters of Butler have disagreed about the degree to which they
hold that Butler's teleological and hierarchical account of human
nature relies on theological premises, and on what sort of teleology is
at play. Some interpreters hold that Butler's arguments that there are
N3 principles only go through if we assume that God created human
beings for a purpose and in accordance with providence (Darwall 1995;
Penelhum 1985). On this account what human beings ought to be or
ought to do follows from what they were designed for. Humans were
designed for virtue and so they ought to be virtuous. Others suggest
that the argument has support without recourse to theological
arguments, and that the teleological facts about human nature imply
norms and values that are obliging without reference to design
(Wedgwood 2007; Irwin 2008).

Like Shaftesbury, Butler held that conscience is a reflective
principle. Shaftesbury asserted that “every reasoning or
reflecting Creature is, by his Nature, forc'd to endure
the Review of his own Mind, and Actions; and to have
Representations of himself, and his inward Affairs, constantly passing
before him, obvious to him, and revolving in his Mind,” (Shaftesbury
1699 II.1 [119] For Butler conscience is more specifically a reflection
on prospective or retrospective actions of oneself and others according
to moral principles. When we judge characters we reflect on actions in
relation to the capacities of agents (“Dissertation on
Virtue” §5). Butler presumes that all ordinary human beings
have a sense of right and wrong in presuming that the moral principles
are accessible for reflection, and that the many ways of describing
this sense of right and wrong all point to one and the same capacity:
“Conscience, moral Reason, moral sense, or divine Reason…
as a Sentiment of the Understanding, or as a Perception of the
Heart” (“Dissertation on Virtue” §1). There are
a number of elements in the natural supremacy of conscience that help
us to understand the nature of its authority.

First, according to Butler conscience has a unique authority among
the principles belonging to human nature. As evidenced in the civil
constitution analogy, we recognize that it should direct other
principles and not vice-versa and that the authority is proper to
conscience and no other principle. Further we recognize that any
ordinary reasonable person has a conscience and ought to obey it.
The term “conscience” was commonly employed in both
theological and philosophical contexts (Shaftesbury identified it with
reflective reason) but was also a legal term of art among the equity
lawyers to whom Butler preached his sermons. In the legal context it
had the sense of acting minimally as an ordinary reasonable person
would and maximally as a fully informed, ideal reasoner would (see
Garrett 2012).

Next, conscience is closely connected to autonomy: when we act
according to conscience we act as a law unto ourselves or according to
a law of our own nature. By being a law unto oneself Butler seemed to
mean being motivated by our inner sense of moral rightness and
wrongness and not being motivated by considerations external to the
rightness or wrongness of acting or not acting (Sermon III §6).
For Butler, like Clarke, moral law, duty, obligation, or virtue, is
right or wrong, morally good or bad independent of any punishment or
reward (“Preface” § 29; “Dissertation on
Virtue” §8). Butler criticized those forms of natural law
and Hobbesian accounts of motivation that held that I am morally
motivated and given an authoritative reason for acting by a law
sanctioned with rewards and punishments by a divine or civil
legislator. He argued that insofar as sanctions are superadded to the
moral rightness or wrongness of the act there is no connection between
the sanction and the rightness or wrongness of the action beyond the
arbitrary will of the legislator. This connection is insufficient for
moral motivation. When I act primarily or only due to an external
sanction I am not acting from a law unto myself (see Darwall
1992).

This law of conscience is readily accessible to us —
“the most near and intimate, the most certain and known”
(“Preface”, § 26) — in a way that probable
consequences of prudential or interested actions are not. That an
authoritative principle dictates that we ought to intend a good action
does not depend on external factors that might prevent or mitigate the
desired prudential outcome (but see McNaughton 2012). Relatedly, ends
may vary but conscience is “fixed, steady, and immovable”.

Butler argued in the Sermons that conscience was a principle
superior to and governing of the particular passions, affections, and
instincts and established a hierarchy among them (Sermon XIII §7).
As previously discussed the hierarchy is natural. But due to
ambiguities in Butler's presentation, in particular due to differences
in the aims of individual sermons, there are a number of ways to
understand the relation between conscience and the other
principles. On one reading conscience is authoritative over the
other main principles discussed by Butler — self-love and benevolence
(if it is a principle — see Section 5) — and all when properly
understood promote the same actions in accordance with our nature. When
we seek our own goods and those of others in accordance with conscience
or reflection we act virtuously and we also promote our private
happiness. But, there are also passages that suggest that Butler held
self-love to be a principle on par with conscience (Sidgwick III.12
§2) or even above it (Sermon IX §15). And there are
passages where Butler suggests that benevolence contains all the
virtues, and consequently this too seems to be a principle on par with
or identical with conscience. Consequently there are multiple plausible
hierarchies. Interpreters who advocate hierarchies which place
self-love or benevolence on par with (or even above) conscience
normally either argue that they are still consistent with the supremacy
of conscience or see this as showing a serious problem in
Butler's arguments.

Here are few of the problems. If it is reasonable to obey conscience,
then “the rules that Conscience lays down” are either
reasonable in and of themselves or they are “the dictates of an
arbitrary authority” (Sidgwick, III.13 §2). If the latter,
then it is hard to see what justifies this arbitrary authority. But if
the former, then Sidgwick argues that there is no independent moral
authority for conscience — a conclusion which Sidgwick thought
perfectly reasonable — and Butler is caught in the same
justificatory circle that the Stoic arguments for life according to
nature were: “it is reasonable to live according to Nature, and
it is natural to live according to Reason” (ibid.). A related
objection is that since both conscience and self-love are rational
principles and in general cannot be in conflict, conscience just
dictates whatever self-love dictates and vice-versa. Consequently
conscience cannot have a distinctive authority. Sturgeon identified a
different circularity connected with the justification of the
supremacy of conscience. Since Butler held that virtuous actions are
those in conformity to the nature of the agent and vicious ones not
in conformity according to Sturgeon “the doctrine of natural
authority of conscience is entirely superfluous” (Sturgeon,
316). This is because if conscience points to the wrongness of an
action the wrongness must be due to the action's conformity or
non-conformity with our nature — i.e. due to a conflict among
principles. Conscience can't be pointing to a conflict with itself
since that would be circular. So it must be a conflict with the next
highest principle: self-interest. But then conscience just asserts
what self-interest dictates, and so the testimony of conscience is
redundant and has no special authority. Put differently, Butler
assumes that his argument that virtue is natural entails an argument
for the supremacy of conscience. But there is no good reason to assume
the entailment — in fact the two are not only independent, but
in conflict. There have been a number of responses to
Sturgeon. Penelhum, notably, denied that Butler was committed to the
“Full Naturalistic Thesis” and argued that Butler instead
held “the independent existence of the judgments of right and
wrong” from Judgments of “naturalness and
unnaturalness” (Penelhum 1990, 68; see also Irwin 2008 §707
and McNaughton 2012).

As previously noted Butler discusses two other important
constituents of human nature in addition to conscience and the
particular passions: self-love and benevolence. Central to
Butler's analysis of self-love is his extremely influential
dismissal of psychological egoism — in C. D. Broad's words “he killed
the theory so thoroughly that he sometimes seems to the modern reader
to be flogging dead horses” (Broad 1930, 55; but see Penelhum 1985;
Henson 1988; Sober 1992). For Butler, the kind of egoism exemplified
for him by Hobbes — “the selfish theory” in
eighteenth century parlance — rests on the failure to distinguish
principles from passions. There is a trivial sense in which all
of our passions are our own and the pleasure we have in discharging or
pursuing any passion is “self” love. But it is also uninteresting: we
can't conclude much from the fact that every passion we take
pleasure in is our passion. We certainly can't conclude that
human beings are always motivated by selfishness. That selfish
theorists thought we could was due in part to their confusing the
“ownership of an impulse with its object” (Broad 1930,
65)—the inference from that the passions are ours to that we are
the objects of the passions. Although the passions belong to us it does
not therefore follow that our “self”, or our
self-gratification, is the object of the passion.

This mistake is connected to another: confusing the principle of
self-love, which has the happiness of the self as its object, with
particular passions and desires. Once we recognize that “the pain
of hunger and shame, and the delight from esteem, are no more self-love
than they are any thing in the world” (Sermon I, Note 3) —
they are particular passions and desires with particular objects — we
see that from the fact that we take pleasure in our passions and that
they are our passions it does not follow that we are guided by selfish
principles. Passions do make us happy or unhappy. But that we have an
interest in being happy or unhappy is distinct from the particular
passions, their objects, or the happiness arising from the passions —
although it may be a reason to prefer one passion over another. This
was connected to Butler's belief that passions are not interested
in themselves. They have particular ends whereas self-love is our
general interest in securing our happiness.

Like Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, Butler thought it empirically
evident that human beings had benevolent motivations, and he thought
it obvious that these benevolent motivations could make us happy and
be consistent with self-interest. He placed more stress on the
exceptions than Shaftesbury had and stressed that they are
“naturally” consistent, i.e. that they are consistent in
our nature and the natural course of things although the unnatural and
intemperate actions of others might interfere locally
(Analogy III §5; §27). He saw Hobbes' reduction of
all other-directed motivations -- such as compassion -- to selfish
motivations in disguise to deny an evident matter of fact for
theoretical reasons, i.e. in order to reconcile benevolence and
compassion with Hobbes' general hypothesis about human nature. But
once a compassionate motivation is recast as a selfish motivation, for
Hobbes as a type of fear, it conflicts with the sense of the term
being explained to the point that it engenders contradiction. For
example: we feel compassion strongly towards our friends. If
compassion were a fear then we would fear our friends strongly, which
seems to conflict with the agreed use of the word
“compassion”.

Which was not to deny of course that people act from selfishness,
self-partiality, and confused self-interest. Selfishness and
self-partiality often mix with benevolent motivations to give rise to
benevolent and even compassionate actions (Sermon V Note 1). Unlike
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, Butler stressed that human beings often act
from mixed and opaque motives (as will be discussed in Section 6). But
the existence of mixed motivations presumes non-interested motivations
with which selfishness is mixed not the reducibility of all motivations
to selfishness or self-partiality. This also has the virtue of being a
simpler explanation than the more complicated selfish motivations
offered by Hobbes' theory.

According to Butler, once clarified self-love is properly understood
as “regard to our own Interest, Happiness, and private Good” (Sermon IX
§8). Butler further suggests that self-love can be pursued better
and worse, and that it is best reflected on via reason in a cool and
impartial way. By “cool” Butler understood
“impartial” in the sense of not being swayed away from the
truth by particular loves and hates or by self-partiality. And by
“reason” Butler understood the faculty of discerning truth
(Sermon XIII §5). Self-love worked best and our
interest was best served when we impartially seek what is truly in our
interest. When understood in this way it can clearly suggest actions
that conflict with selfishness. Conversely resolute selfishness and
self-partiality are not the best course for self-love. To satisfy
a particular desire may or may not make us happy in either the short or
long-term and may not educe to our private good. And although
satisfying a desire may make us happy, and all of our happiness may be
the result of particular passions, no particular passion has happiness
in general as its object.

Conversely we might fruitlessly seek our interest but have no
particular object in mind. Or we might obsess over our interest to such
a degree that we would continually be exercising the principle of
self-love but not actually satisfying our particular passions and
consequently not be happy. “Happiness consists in the
Gratification of certain Affections, Appetites, Passions, with Objects
which are by Nature adapted to them,” (Sermon IX §16).
Self-love is a principle governing actions leading to the
satisfaction or avoidance of the particular passions. Both
self-love and the particular passions are necessary for the proper
natural functioning of human beings.

Once self-love is distinguished from selfishness, self-partiality and
the particular passions it becomes clearer that the conflict between
self-love and benevolence is mostly an illusion when considered in the
long term. Particular passions like compassion are perfectly
consistent with self-love, indeed Butler held that to take pleasure in
benevolent and virtuous acts and view them as part of one's happiness
is “itself the Temper of Satisfaction and Enjoyment.” In
the Analogy, Butler provided further arguments that the natural
tendency of virtue was the reward of happiness, and the natural
punishment for vice, misery. We often fail to see this natural
tendency because we focus on accidents or a limited range of examples
to the detriment of the consistent long-term tendencies. Butler
suggested a thought experiment of a monarchy run on virtuous
principles (Analogy III §20) and argued that it would tend to be
happier and more powerful than other regimes if allowed to flourish,
eventually becoming a universal monarchy. The natural tendency of
happiness, power, and virtue all coincide in its flourishing, growth,
and moral governance. And happiness as coupled to virtue in this life
points to happiness as the consistent reward for virtue in the next
when accidents do not threaten to derail the natural tendency.

Which is not to suggest that conscience, virtue and self-love are
identical, although Butler connected them very deeply (Frey 1992 and
n.p.). Although virtue tends to coincide with interest it tends to
coincide because a virtuous life is a life with the right balance of
benevolent passions and dispositions to make one happy and a life which
responds to the unchanging and immediate moral authority of conscience
-- although they are approved of and motivated by self-love as
well.

Butler uses benevolence mainly to refer to a particular
passion or a cluster of passions (McNaughton 1992), although sometimes
he also refers to it and cognate terms (“love of thy neighbor”) as
principles that might have particular passions as their objects. There
is still a fair amount of scholarly disagreement as to which sense is
more central in Butler's arguments (nicely summarized in Irwin
2008). Benevolence as a particular passion, like ambition or revenge,
is never interested or disinterested in and of itself. It is only
interested or disinterested in so far as it is guided by or in
accordance with our self-love. Acting in a benevolent manner might make
us happy. Indeed it seems to be the case that benevolent actions and
affections often do make people happy. And we might initially decide to
gratify the passions of benevolence from self-love. But the passions
themselves have no more or less connection to interest than any other
passion does.

Not being made happy by benevolent actions would point to a defect
of temper or a lack of balance in one's nature if the result was
diminished happiness and going against the dictates of conscience. As
noted, for both Butler and Shaftesbury, self-love and virtue converge
when properly understood. But importantly according to Butler,
Shaftesbury erred in not recognizing that they could conflict in
particular cases, and if they did conflict the distinctive authority of
conscience would trump our apparent prudential motivations. This did
not mean that our general interest conflicted with conscience, but
rather that local prudential information could give reasons for
particular reasons for action that conflicted with conscience.

There is also some (more contested) evidence that Butler
thought of benevolence as a ruling principle. Butler referred to
the general principle of charity or “love of our neighbor as thyself”
as a virtuous principle or as the reason guided endeavor to promote the
happiness of proximate others to the same degree that one attempts to
promote one's own good (although he also identified “love of
neighbor” with the particular passion of compassion). This
was a regulating principle of action, perhaps distinct from benevolent
passions. Butler suggested in Sermon IX that we have a fundamental
obligation to the happiness of sensible creatures other than ourselves
insofar as they are capable of pleasure and pain, an obligation that
can only be ignored in order to bring about greater happiness (to be
further discussed in Section 6). Although this appears to be a
fundamental moral obligation to maximize welfare a few years later
Butler strongly criticized theories on which the overall happiness is
what makes an action good or evil and argued that our conscience holds
actions to be morally good or bad independent of the expected or actual
consequences for happiness (“Dissertation”, §5).
Most of the secondary literature takes Butler to generally be an
anti-utilitarian (but see Louden 1995 and in a different way see Frey),
but there is disagreement as to whether Butler held a consistent
position or changed his mind (see McPherson 1948-9). Some even argue
that he might be able to embrace a form of consequentialism (see
McNaughton, forthcoming).

Finally, Butler claimed that benevolence is the whole of virtue in
Sermon XII, although he qualified the claim later in Sermon XII and
qualified it even more strongly in the “Dissertation on
Virtue”. Butler did not mean that to act benevolently in each and
every action was the entirety of virtue, for example as we shall see in
the next section moral resentment was an appropriate attitude for a
virtuous agent. Rather he meant that to act according to and to
be motivated by the principle of loving one's neighbor generally leads
to virtuous and morally approved actions. Although self-partiality
tends in the opposite direction, benevolence offsets this tendency and
brings benevolent and self-partial affections in proper proportion.
Conversely self-partiality brings benevolence in line with self-love
such that it balances properly in our nature.

According to Butler when we approve of virtue in an agent this gives
rise to benevolence towards the agent. The ultimate object of this love
of benevolent moral agents is our love of God, the most benevolent
agent. In stressing the continuity between love of neighbor and love of
God, Butler also stressed the continuity between our approval of moral
agents and natural theology. Finally, to have a character such that
benevolent actions make one happy is normally to have a character that
encompasses all of the virtues.

Compassion was besides the love of God the most important of the
particular passions involving benevolence for Butler. He defined
compassion as “real sorrow and concern for the misery of our fellow
creatures” giving rise to the desire to relieve their distress. The
passion of compassion arose from the imaginative ability to substitute
another for oneself and thereby to be affected by the distresses of
that other with whom one compassionates as towards oneself (Sermon V
Note 1). Butler readily admitted that the psychological process
that gives rise to compassion included both pleasure in the fact that
we were not suffering the distress as well and awareness of our own
susceptibility to the ills prompting distress in the object of our
compassion. But although the process of giving rise to compassion also
gives rise to and even includes self-partial thoughts, “compassion”
refers strictly to a “real sorrow and concern for the misery of our
fellow creatures” (Sermon V Note 1). To identify it with a self-partial
pleasure in the fact that we were not in distress or with the desire to
alleviate distress in order to no longer be annoyed by it was to be
confused about the meaning of word. Although according to Butler
compassion, like any affection, must be governed by reason, the
motivation to virtuous actions that compassion gives rise to would not
be given rise to by reason alone. Consequently the passion of
compassion has a central role in our moral actions. Moreover, the
principle of private self-love is not sufficient to serve our welfare
without compassion, i.e., compassion is an important ingredient in our
well being in addition to being an important moral passion. Its
importance for our well being can be seen, according to Butler, in the
fact that those who lack compassion, who have “hardness of heart”, tend
to have diminished happiness blocking the scope and degree of their
happiness.

Resentment or anger was somewhat more difficult for Butler to deal
with insofar as it was ubiquitous to human beings but conflicted with
the Christian command to love our enemies. Butler made two
distinctions, between settled (or deliberate) and hasty (or sudden)
resentment and between resentment raised by non-moral harm or
resentment raised by moral injury. He further distinguished between
resentment and the negative passion of malice (although he denies the
existence of disinterested, cool, direct ill-will or malice). Hasty
resentment is an immediate response to “mere harm without appearance of
wrong or injustice,” (Sermon VIII, §7). It can be excessive and
misguided, and one can be morally culpable for excessive and misguided
expressions of it, but hasty resentment serves an important end of
self-preservation and care of one's near and dear. Settled resentment
is an affection that has moral evil or injustice as its object.
Although moral evil gives rise to pain which can strengthen this
settled resentment, the object of the resentment is not the pain or
harm done but instead the design or intention to morally injure, harm,
do wrong and injustice. And the goal of resentment is to cause
appropriate injury in a wrongdoer, not malign injury or revenge that
are distinguished from resentment. For Butler, settled resentment has
an important moral end in drawing men together to pursue justice, in
making them fear engendering resentment in mankind due to their
actions, and to extirpate moral wickedness: it is “one of the common
bonds by which society is held together, a fellow feeling, which each
individual has in behalf of the whole species, as well as oneself.”
Indeed Butler goes so far as to suggest that communal moral resentment
and the justice it gives rise to is what separates us from the state of
nature where each man is arbiter of his own punishment which quickly
devolves into revenge (a point developed further in Six
Sermons).

This raises a central problem for resentment as a moral sentiment or
passion: unless kept strictly within bounds it devolves into revenge
and conflicts with benevolence and virtue. Part of the answer is that
however extreme an injury done, and however settled the resentment
rising in response, the execution of justice does not supersede the
prior obligation of good will we have to all humans insofar as they are
capable of happiness and misery. Rather we harm wrong doers to
preserve “the quiet and happiness of the world” and this “general
and more enlarged obligation destroys a more particular and confined
one of the same kind, inconsistent with it. Guilt and injury then does
not dispense with or supersede the duty of goodwill,” (Sermon IX
§15). Another part of the answer is that since the proper object
is the injustice, to resent someone's whole character as opposed to the
particular aspect of character that gave rise to the harm, i.e. to
portray them as wholly monstrous, is to move beyond the appropriate
bounds. This pitfall is easier to avoid when we recognize our own mixed
characters and flaws. Relatedly, and perhaps most importantly one must
recognize that self-partiality is often fueling a desire for revenge
against those we resent insofar as they have injured us. We ought to
attempt to view injuries to us from as distant and unprejudiced a human
viewpoint as possible — with full awareness of our own future
non-existence and final judgment -- and when we do we will be able to
recognize that our enemies are as often as not mistaken or
acting inadvertently.

The awareness of our own flaws, and our acceptance of the
non-existence of cool, disinterested and malign wills as well as our
recognition of the ubiquity of mixed characters also gives rise to
compassion and the desire to forgive. But notably for Butler
forgiveness does not entail giving up resentment for moral wrongs
(Griswold 2008). Rather it entails checking inappropriate resentment,
anger, and revenge, being aware when what appears to be a moral harm is
in fact an inadvertent injury whose putative moral injustice is
inflated by our own partiality, and treating others who harm us with
the same compassion that we hold all humans due good-will should be
treated.

Butler devoted three of his Sermons to issues connected with
self-deceit (IV, VI, X). The focus on the pervasiveness of self-deceit
as a serious moral problem is an important difference between Butler
and his more optimistic confreres Hutcheson and Shaftesbury. For Butler
we are often self-deceived even when we think we are doing what is
morally right (in fact if we think we are wholly in the right we are
almost always deceived (Sermon X §13)) and we often only recognize
our self-deception — if at all -- upon later reflection. That we
are so prone to self-deception is mainly due to a lack of reflection
when acting prompted by self-partiality.

According to Butler most of us can access what the right thing is to
do in most circumstances, and most of us often wish to do the right
thing when it doesn't conflict with our self-partiality. But we
are also susceptible to engage in self-deceit in order to justify
acting on self-partial motives even when it conflicts with what is
morally right. Butler illustrated the this sort of self-deceit by
reference to the example of Balaam, a prophet who had been asked to
curse the Israelites by the Moabites. Even though God expressly forbade
Balaam, he still considered cursing the Israelites when greater rewards
were offered by Moabite ambassadors. The puzzle was how could Balaam
know what was right but still be motivated to do what was wrong?
Butler's answer was not so much to try to solve the problem of
akrasia as to describe the moral psychology of
self-deceit.

Balaam's moral failure was effected by his avoiding reflecting
on his actions, by a pervasive asymmetry in how we view ourselves and
how we view others due to native self-partiality that can only be
corrected by reflection, and by a difficulty in discerning the exact
degree to which we are obliged to act morally. The three are
interconnected. We are normally happy to unreflectively cut more slack
for ourselves than we are willing to cut for others due to
self-partiality or an “overfondness for ourselves” (Sermon
X §6). When a morally right action is a matter of degree, it is
easy and common to avoid reflection and to err on the side of
self-partiality in the degree in which the moral action is undertaken.
This allows one to engage in more and more immoral acts while
convincing oneself that each undermining of the rule is justified and
reasonable. In the story of Balaam, Balaam invites the ambassadors to
stay the night under the aegis of hospitality. By analogy for Butler we
undermine rules under the aegis of ordinary sociability and civility
– for example we engage in self-serving malicious gossip under
the aegis of being sociable — and gradually undermine our capacity to
act from the dictate of conscience when called upon to do so.

Since conscience is authoritative and proximate for Butler, and
since the dictates of conscience coincide with our self-love,
self-deceit only gets off the ground if we avoid reflection or if we
reflect poorly. In addition to the oversimplifying and bad faith just
described, we give self-deceit a foothold by refusing to look at or
avoiding the facts of the matter when we feel these facts will go
against our self-partial desires — Butler gives the example of
profligate spenders not looking at the state of their finances (Sermon
X §11) — and by relying piecemeal on the counsel of others
when these counsels serve our interest.

In one of his less read sermons (Sermon IV) Butler suggests that
careful government of the tongue is important to one's moral well
being. The role of others — both our oppositions to and
agreements with others — and its relation to self-governance is
particularly crucial for Butler in explaining this sort of self-deceit.
Our tendency to paint the characters of others in black and white
allows us to justify our immoral actions by virtue of the fact that we
self-deceptively (and self-righteously) cast ourselves and our
motivations as wholly good in opposition to our opponent who is wholly
evil, and so we can treat them however we see fit. We also draw on the
idle comments of others that conform with our self-partial desires to
serve as external justification of our immoral actions.

The problem then is given human beings great capacity for self-deceit,
how can it be prevented? Is not the attempt to prevent self-deceit as
prone to self-deceit as anything else? Butler's answer is that
habitual and systematic self-reflection and self-governance by rigid
rules are the best response. In a manner reminiscent of Epictetus'
famous maxim one must watch oneself as an enemy lying in ambush, and
view one's actions as an enemy would judging them harshly. Butler
suggests a two part rule to this end “One is, to substitute
another for yourself, when you take a survey of any part of your
behavior, or consider what is proper and fit and reasonable for you to
do on any occasion: the other part is, that you… consider
yourself as the person affected by such a behavior,” (Sermon X
§15). The rule “itself may be dishonestly applied”
but even the misguided attempt to apply it may reveal more truth than
not applying it at all. In the Analogy Butler argued that one
of the central moral purposes of this life is as a probationary period
in the acquisition of habits of self-governance (Analogy
V). That these habits are not fool-proof is a consequence of the fact
that our ability to apply them seriously to ourselves is one of the
bases for our ultimate punishment and reward.

The problem of self-deceit is connected to another of Butler's abiding
themes, human ignorance of the larger design of God. In Sermon XV
“Upon Human Ignorance” (notably the final sermon of the
collection) and in the Analogy and “Dissertation on
Virtue”, Butler stressed that our knowledge of design is
probable at best. Sermon XV concludes with an exhortation reminiscent
of Locke. Since we have such limited knowledge of providence and of
God's design, we should turn our attention to that which we can have
knowledge of: our nature insofar as it bears on our moral governance
and conduct.

The argument of the Analogy and the “Dissertation on
Virtue” were both premised on this. In the Analogy,
Butler argued that we have probable evidence that our morally right
and wrong actions will be judged and rewarded and punished by God and
that this life is a probationary period where we act in ways that will
be ultimately judged.

Butler's Sermons were read in the eighteenth century, in particular
after the publication of the Analogy, and went through
multiple editions. The Analogy was reprinted many times in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as were Butler's works. His
initial influence seems to have been greatest on Scottish
philosophers, including (perhaps) his contemporary Francis Hutcheson,
George Turnbull, David Fordyce, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid,
and their fellow travellers — notably Edmund Burke. Hume sought
to meet Butler and emended the manuscript copy of A Treatise on Human
Nature he gave to him for fear it would cause offence. Hume's and
Smith's accounts of sympathy, compassion, resentment, justice, and
their empirical attitude towards moral psychology (and to the
centrality of moral psychology for ethics) and the limits of
metaphysical explanations in morals bear Butler's influence. Hume's
discussion of induction in his
Treatise has also been seen as a criticism of Butler's
procedure in the Analogy (Russell 2008). In the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century Butler's Sermons became more
influential than the Analogy, due to their influence at
Oxford and Cambridge and particularly on William Whewell (see Tennant
195–199) and Sidgwick. Throughout the later nineteenth century
and the twentieth century they were discussed by and had an influence on
many of the central moral philosophers of the Anglo-American tradition
— G. E. Moore, Pritchard, Rawls, etc.. Butler's influence and
importance has persisted.

Butler, J., 1736, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and
Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, London:
J. and P. Knapton, 2nd corrected edition. [This was the
corrected edition that appeared in the same year as the initial
imprint. The two dissertations — “Of Personal
Identity” and “Of the Nature of Virtue” were
appended to it.]

Butler, J., 1749, Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls
Chapel… To which are added Six Sermons, Preached on Publick
Occasions, London: J. and P. Knapton, 4th ed.
[This edition marked the appearance of the Six Sermons.]

I have cited these works from the most complete current edition,
although the citations should allow for passages to be easily
identified in other editions:

White, D. (ed.), 2006, The Works of Bishop Butler, Rochester, NY:
University of Rochester Press.

I have cited the “Preface” to the 2nd edition
of the Sermons as “Preface”, the Sermons by number (i.e.
“Sermon VI”), the “Introduction” to the Analogy
of Religion as “Introduction”, the main contents of the
work by “Analogy” and chapter, the Dissertation of Virtue
as “Dissertation”, the Six Sermons as “Six
Sermons” and the Clarke/Butler correspondence as
“Clarke/Butler”. All references are by paragraph,
corresponding to the paragraphs in the White edition above.

Bishop Joseph Butler,
an online website devoted to Butler, maintained by David and Linda
White. On the website are extensive and useful bibliographies and the
proofs from White's edition of Butler's works.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Ian Blaustein, Roger Crisp, Charles Griswold, Knud
Haakonssen, James Harris, Colin Heydt, David McNaughton, Amelie Rorty,
Daniel Star, and Bob Tennant for extensive and extremely helpful
comments. Thanks to Stephen Darwall for suggesting the article, to Ray
Frey for initiating my interest in Butler, and to the students in my
Butler seminar for helping me think through the issues discussed in
the article.